I’m sure many other Windows users out there that dread “Patch Tuesday” (which is the second Tuesday of each month when Microsoft release all of their critical patches) and the subsequent reboot required to make the patches take hold. Of course, I make sure to get around to rebooting as soon as I can but I hate being nagged every four hours to make it happen.
What annoys me most is that Microsoft supposedly introduced hot patching functionality in Windows Vista SP1 yet we still need to reboot. It seems a bit ironic that Microsoft developed this capability yet doesn’t utilise it for its own operating system updates.
There is a way to get some relief though courtesy of “Leave Me Alone!” from Persistence Unlimited.
Basically, it stops the Windows Update service which is responsible for the nagging. It doesn’t disable the service so when you do reboot everything will be back as it was originally. Bear in mind, you’ll need to run this software every time you start getting the nag messages as it doesn’t run persistently. Leave Me Alone! works on Windows XP/Vista/7.
For the more technical amongst us, you can permanently alter the nag time to 24 hours by doing the following:
- Click on “Start” then “Run”,
- Type in “gpedit.msc”,
- Browse to “Local Computer Policy” –> “Computer Configuration” –> “Administrative Templates” –> “Windows Components” –> “Windows Update”,
- Double click on “Re-prompt for restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations”.
- Set it to “Enabled” and change the numeric value to “1440” then click “OK”.
So pick your poison and stop the nagging!
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